In July 2017, Intel released the Movidius Neural Compute Stick (NCS)–a first-of-its-kind USB-based device for rapid prototyping and development of inference applications at the edge. NCS is powered by the same low power, high-performance Movidius Vision Processing Unit (VPU) that can be found in millions of smart security cameras, gesture-controlled drones, industrial machine vision devices and more. Delivering significant acceleration over previous, compute-constrained platforms, the Neural Compute Stick is enabling all sorts of companies to embrace the revolution brought about by deep learning.

NCS Platform Director Ashish Pai discusses the development of this unique product and adoption of this completely new tool, and shares stories of companies–ranging from established multinational tech companies to ambitious startups–that have gone from prototyping on the Neural Compute Stick to developing full-fledged products utilizing embedded neural networks.